Lawn Party: Violet Syrup and Cordials

Another way to eat your lawn…

Our so-called lawn is now a meadow of flowers.  Covered with white and blue violets, bugleweed, white and blue ajuga, moscari, and star flowers, dotted with bright yellow dandelions and a few forget-me-nots in damp places, and strewn with the fallen petals of crab apple trees, it is a burst of color simply too pretty to mow. Obviously, by not controlling it, we’ll be making matters worse in a town of manicured green plots. No herbicides or pesticides here, thank you very much. Which means that it’s ours for the eating, if we dare.

Violets – the flowers and the tender leaves – are not only edible, but are nutritious. While we don’t make a feast of them, they garnish salads at this time of year. I make candied violets for Mother’s Day cakes, violet vinegar and the prettiest violet jelly you’ll ever see. This year, I also made violet syrup. It’s basically simple syrup with floral overtones that we stir into seltzer, or make into a cordial – non-alcoholic with a tinge of ginger syrup leftover from my Christmas adventures – or a refreshing spritzer with a splash of light white wine.

The trick with violets is to pick them in late morning, after the dew has dried and before it gets too hot. They’re most aromatic then, though some have little aroma at all until you concentrate them. I remove the petals from the green bract to get the purest color.  The color tends to be gray at first, but then turns bright violet when a small amount of lemon juice is added. For long-term storage, you could add citric acid as a preservative, which would have the same color reaction as lemon.

Violet Syrup

Pick violets in late morning after the dew has dried. Remove petals from green bracts. Measure them. (I had 1½ c of petals.) Cover the petals with an equal amount of boiling water and set them aside for 4-6 hours or overnight. Drain the liquid, measure it and place it in a saucepan (1 had just under 1½ c.) Add an equal amount of sugar to the liquid and being it to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Let it simmer for a few minutes to produce syrup. Add a tsp lemon juice per cup of liquid. The color will change from gray to violet. Cool and store in the refrigerator in an airtight container.

Read Full Post »

White Bean Soup with Bacon and Dandelion Pesto

Bacon is the center of the Venn diagram of this soup. White beans and bacon are a traditional pairing as are dandelion leaves and bacon, so why not combine the two to make a perfect complement? 

I’d been eyeing the quart of (regional and organic) cannellini beans that I made a while ago and froze, wondering what to make with it. Like canned beans, they were too mushy to be served whole so I decided on a pureed soup, transformed by the addition of chopped onion slowly cooked with a thick strip of smoky bacon. I added a little water to get the soup to the desired consistency. Separately, I made pesto of raw dandelion leaves from our lawn, pureeing them in a food processor with olive oil, salt and garlic.  First, I garnished the soup with the pesto and liked it so much that I added in quite a lot. The slight bite of the greens and the bacon perked up the smooth and mild beans to make a satisfying Saturday soup.

White Bean Soup with Bacon and Dandelion Pesto

1 thick strip of smoky bacon, chopped

1 onion, chopped

4 c cooked white kidney or cannellini beans, with liquid (or two 14.5-oz cans)

Water as needed

1 c dandelion leaves, washed

2 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped

1 tbsp olive oil

½ tsp salt

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

In a large saucepan over medium heat, cook the bacon until it has rendered its fat and turned brown. Add the onions and cook slowly until translucent. Add the beans and their liquid and cook until the flavors are well combined, about 15 minutes. Add water as needed. Puree the soup in a food processor or with an immersion blender, adding more water to reach the desired consistency.

Meanwhile, place the dandelion leaves in a food processor, add olive oil, salt and garlic and process until well pureed. (I leave mine a little chunky and I use less oil than most people do.) Stir the pesto into the soup and add salt (if needed) and pepper to taste.

Serves 4.

Read Full Post »

How to Eat Your Lawn: Barley “Risotto” with Dandelion Leaves and Flowers

Ah, the first foraging of spring. While we’re winding down the winter storage pantry and planting seeds that will produce food weeks for now, I get excited about the foodstuffs that just appear. We have pots full of chives, lovage and sorrel peaking up in enough volume to harvest, and a lawn full of violets and dandelions.  In a town with green manicured perfection, we’re not the best neighbors, but our gigantic black walnut tree would thwart any perfect growth. That’s our excuse, other than the fact that we eat our lawn.

Dandelions are great eating. So great that they’re cultivated and celebrated. I think the leaves are at their best when the flowers are just starting to open or just before. I haven’t researched why, but I observe that leafy varieties with nascent flowers thrive under our pines, yielding medium-large and uncomplicated leaves. In the lawn itself, the leaves “whorl” close to the ground and defy cutting but produce prodigious blossoms. Since I think of weeding as harvest, I go for both the greens and the flowers. (If you do this, make sure to pick dandelions that are from an area untouched by car fumes, pesticides or dogs.)

Young dandelion leaves are tender like spinach and piquant like young arugula, both increasing in bitterness with age.  We eat them raw as salad, puree them into pesto for spooning on potatoes or pasta, or sauté or wilt them to serve as greens. I turn the flowers into syrup and jelly but also use them in risotto.  Today, I set out to make risotto with rice, but when I read in the New York Times that conventional rice in this country contains arsenic due to pesticide and fertilizer residue from previous crops (such as cotton in the south), I freaked out and switched to barley.

Barley can be cooked the same way as Arborio rice to make risotto (the word comes from “rice” so I’m referring to its cooking technique). I used pearled barley, and even so, found that the grains took a little longer to cook and needed a little more liquid than rice. Blanched and drained dandelion greens were folded in near the end of the cooking period, and the dish was garnished with the yellow tufts of dandelion flowers. 

Barley “Risotto” with Dandelion Leaves and Flowers

1 small onion, finely chopped

Butter (or olive oil)

¾ c pearled barley

¼ c white wine

4 c chicken stock, warmed

A few handfuls of dandelion greens

¼ c grated Parmesan cheese

Salt and pepper

Garnish: a few dandelion flowers, yellow petals removed from the green bract

In a medium-large saucepan over medium heat, lightly sauté the onion in a little butter or olive oil until soft. Add the barley and stir to coat the grains. Add the wine and cook until the wine is evaporated. Start adding the stock, about ¼ c at a time, regulating the heat to keep the liquid at a simmer. The risotto should cook in 25-30 minutes. About 10 minutes before the end, you will add dandelion greens cooked as described below.

Wash and trim the dandelion greens and add them to a small amount of salted boiling water. As soon as they’re nearing tenderness, drain them and squeeze out excess liquid. Chop them lightly and add to the risotto while it is cooking.

When the grains are tender, remove the risotto from heat and stir in the Parmesan cheese.  Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately, garnished with dandelion flowers if desired.

Serves 3-4 as a light main dish or substantial side dish.

Read Full Post »

How to Eat Your Lawn: A Salad of Bittercress and Violets

I don’t weed my lawn. I eat it. One of the earliest food crops in my yard is bittercress, a member of the Cruciferae family of green plants (think mustard). It’s a pretty invasive plant that enjoys cold and wet conditions such as those we typically experience at this time of year. Reviled as a weed or served as a lightly spicy precursor to watercress and arugula, bittercress is useful as a garnish when parsley and other herbs are fast asleep. It keeps well so I harvest a bunch before the plants go to seed and keep it in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks.

Then there are dandelion leaves to harvest, before the plants get large and flower. If you’re trying to eliminate them from your lawn, this is a good time to dig them up since the roots are still shallow. The leaves are edible (as are the flowers) and make a good salad ingredient.  Later, when they’re larger, I’ll wilt them in a bacon and vinegar dressing, but right now they’re very tender so I leave them as is. And now, violets are just beginning to show their flowers. When the violet flowers first come out, the tiny leaves are tender and delicious so I harvest them for my foraged salad along with a few pretty blossoms. I also added a few kale trimmings from my awakening garden. Dressed lightly in oil and vinegar, this small-portion salad packs a lot of flavor and signals that spring is really here. 

Read Full Post »

More Flower Jellies: Borage and Marigold

This is a finale to three-quarters of a year of making jelly from flowers. It started with a lawn full of violets and then dandelions, moved on to Queen Anne’s Lace in high summer, and then to borage flowers harvested at the last minute before a potential frost, and finally to marigold, rescued from under a blanket of snow and ice – shockingly — in October. I’ve been tinkering with these ideas since the spring and am finally getting them to a couple of standard approaches.

 Borage is a lovely herb used for its greens and its flowers. The flowers are absolutely stunning, bright blue five-petal stars. They create a colorful counterpoint to a salad of yellow tomatoes or baby greens. Because of their growing habit, with downward-facing clusters, the first impression of the plant is its drooping, fuzzy leaves, which taste a little like cucumber. Lots of world cuisines use borage leaves, and apart from incorporating them in a pesto of mixed green herbs, I haven’t cooked with them much. But I like to make jelly with the flowers, which are honey-like when tasted raw. This jelly was made by soaking the flower petals (without the green bracts, which slip right off) in boiled water for 15 minutes, draining the liquid, adding sugar, a little lemon juice and pinch of good-quality powdered pectin (like the organic brand called Pomona’s).

 Alternatively, I make jelly with green apples, boiled down – peels and seeds and all – which create natural pectin. A little citrus tends to make the pectin more effective. If I have a seedy lemon, I add the pips to the apple mixture to push the gelling quality a little. For the marigold jelly, I thought that the bright color and slightly pungent flavor of the marigolds would be a good complement to the apple-based jelly.

After digging the marigolds out from the snow, I made jelly two ways: with powdered pectin and with apples. The flowers were great for imparting color to the jellies. The apples dulled the color somewhat but it was still effective.

By the way, there’s some debate about how edible marigolds are. Calendulas, which are often called pot marigolds, are definitely edible. Most sources that question whether the garden variety is edible don’t come to that conclusion because of any poisonous qualities, but rather judge the plants by their pungency, which in the garden, act as a deterrent for vermin and insects.  The petals of my marigolds weren’t as pungent as the leaves, so I decided we could eat them.

 Taste test results: the jelly with powdered pectin allowed the flavor of the marigolds to prevail, clean and clear, and the color was truer to the brightness of the flowers. The other jelly, which was thicker, contained 3-4 times the amount of marigold petals and its flavor was muted by the apples. Interesting.

Flower Jelly

Note that this is a proportional recipe, so you should adjust according to the volume of flower petals that you have.

1c flower petals (see below)

Boiling water to cover (about 1 c)

Sugar (75% of reduced water, about 3/4 c)

1½ tsp lemon juice

½ tsp powdered pectin (Pomona, Sure-Jell)

If you’re planning on processing the jelly for long-term storage, prepare jars and kettle for water bath canning.

Cut the petals from their green bracts. Rinse them lightly to remove any dirt and scare off any critters. Pour boiling water over the flowers just to cover. Let steep for 15 minutes. Drain off the liquid, discarding most of the flowers but reserving a few to add to the completed jelly. Measure the liquid and add ¾ of that amount of sugar (3/4 c sugar to 1 c water). Add lemon juice.

Place a saucer in the freezer to test the gel. Bring the mixture to a boil in a wide saucepan and add powdered pectin. Boil until a drop placed on the frozen saucer is wrinkly to the touch, about 6 minutes.

Ladle into hot jars and either store them in the refrigerator after they’ve cooled or process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat, remove the lid and let sit for 5 minutes before removing to a counter to sit undisturbed until cool.

Makes a scant 2 four-ounce jars.

Natural Pectin Marigold-Apple Jelly

3 tart apples, chopped, including skin, cores and seeds

Water (about 2 c)

3/4 c marigold petals (cut from green bracts)

Sugar (75% amount of reduced liquid, about 1 c)

1 tbsp lemon juice

Place the chopped apples in a wide saucepan. Cover with water and bring to a boil. Add marigold petals and lower the heat, cooking the apples until very soft. Stir lightly to make sure they don’t stick to the bottom of the pan, but be careful not to mush them or the jelly will be cloudy. Turn the apple mixture into a muslin jelly bag suspended over a bowl (or into a sieve lined with cheesecloth place over a bowl). Let the mixture drip for several hours or overnight.

If you’re planning on processing the jelly for long-term storage, prepare jars and kettle for water bath canning. Place a saucer in the freezer to test the gel.

Measure the liquid and add ¾ of that amount of sugar (3/4 c sugar to 1 c water). Add lemon juice. Bring the mixture to a boil in a wide saucepan. Boil until a drop placed on the frozen saucer is wrinkly to the touch, about 6 minutes.

Ladle into hot jars and either store them in the refrigerator after they’ve cooled or process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat, remove the lid and let sit for 5 minutes before removing to a counter to sit undisturbed until cool.

Makes 2 four-ounce jars and more for tasting.

Read Full Post »

Queen Anne’s Lace Jelly

Foraging the breezy fields for that lacy white flower known as Queen Anne’s Lace, also known as wild carrot, yielded a few jars of pale pink, aromatic and delicious jelly. Pretty and magical. As with the violets and dandelions that I turned into royal fare in the spring, the best time to pick the flowers is in the morning, when they are most aromatic and before the natural oils evaporate (if that’s the right term). This is also true when picking herbs like mint, basil and lemon verbena for making jelly. Taste and smell are so closely related that these delicate concoctions need to capture the maximum flavor. These flower jellies are remarkably less subtle than I would have thought, in either color or taste.

The technique is simple and yields jelly in no time. The flowers are trimmed away from the dropping green bract and steeped in boiling water for 10-15 minutes to extract the flavor. The resulting water is grayish pink. Adding sugar in the ratio of ¾ cup of sugar to every cup of water and a tablespoonful of lemon juice, the mixture is brought to a boil on top of the stove. I add ½ tsp good quality powdered pectin (one of the few recipes where I use it since I prefer to develop it from the ingredients and method) and continue boiling to the gel point, about 10. Ladle into jars and seal. Either process it in a water bath canner or refrigerate it.

Queen Anne’s Lace Jelly

2 c Queen Anne’s lace flowers (see below)

Boiling water to cover (about 2 c)

Sugar (75% of volume of water, about 1 ½ c)

1 tbsp lemon juice

½ tsp powdered pectin (Pomona, Sure-Jell)

If you’re planning on processing the jelly for long term storage, prepare jars and kettle for water bath canning.

Cut the flowers from the bracts and shorten the stems, yielding 2 cups. Rinse them to make sure there are no critters around (ants love these sweet flowers). Pour boiling water over the flowers just to cover (about 2 c). Let steep for 15 minutes. Drain off the liquid, discarding the flowers. Measure the liquid and add ¾ of that amount of sugar (3/4 c sugar to 1 c water). Add 1 tbsp lemon juice.

Place a saucer in the freezer to test the gel. Bring the mixture to a boil in a wide saucepan and add ½ tsp of powdered pectin. Boil until a drop placed on the frozen saucer is wrinkly to the touch, about 10 minutes.

Ladle into hot jars and either store them in the refrigerator after they’ve cooled or process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat, remove the lid and let sit for 5 minutes before removing to a counter to sit undisturbed until cool.

Makes 3 four-ounce jars plus extra for tasting.

Read Full Post »

Violet Jelly

What a coincidence, the  week of the Royal Wedding. A perfect combination of tradition and today’s idea  of  the environment. Violet jelly: I transformed sprightly flowers into a glistening substance with a jewel-like violet-magenta color, and an incomparable honey-like flavor of lush flowers, subtle, slightly sweet.  Astonishing, actually. The just-picked flowers are gently shaken in a colander to release small dirt particles, and then misted to clean them.  Simmering the blossoms in water releases the color into the liquid, which at that point was dark violet leaning toward gray because of the color of the small green bracts. With the addition of sugar, powdered pectin and a touch of lemon juice (to encourage the pectin), the color jumped to magenta (from the citric acid in the pectin).  The jelly was cooked to perfection in less than 5 minutes. 

The best time to pick the violets is midday, after the dew has evaporated and before the sun is too hot. They are most aromatic at that time. Make sure to pick the violets from an area that has not been sprayed with chemicals. Mine came from the prairie that we call our front lawn.  

Violet Jelly

2 c violet flowers (no stems)

2 c water (equal in volume to violets)

½ c sugar

1 tsp lemon juice

1 tsp powdered pectin (Sure-Jell) dissolved in 1 tbsp cold water

Shake the flowers gently in a colander to remove small particles of dirt and gently mist them to clean. Place the flowers and water in a saucepan and bring just to a boil. Lower the heat to medium and simmer for 10 minutes to release the color and flavor into the liquid. Drain the liquid, pressing down on the flowers to get the last drops.

Place a saucer in the freezer, which you’ll use to test the gel.

Return the violet liquid to the saucepan and add the sugar, lemon and dissolved pectin.  Bring to a boil and cook rapidly for about 3 minutes. Test for gel by placing a drop on the frozen saucer. If it wrinkles when touched, the gel is set. If it’s runny, continue to cook until the gel test is set. This will take about 5 minutes altogether. Do not overcook, The gel will set after you remove it from the heat. Pour into hot clean jars.

Makes about two 4 oz jars of jelly.

Read Full Post »

Foraging for Gold: Dandelion Jelly

I love free stuff. Think about everything that’s free to the gardener: rainwater, sun, breeze, soil, seeds, and weeds. We’re so lucky. Even many of the plants thought to be weeds are edible. I weeded my garden of chickweed and made dinner. Lambs lettuce will be coming along soon, and purslane. Not to mention ramps (which I’m currently avoiding due to over-harvesting). Right now, dandelions are aplenty. After days of feasting on salads made of the leaves, it’s time to enjoy the flowers and make dandelion jelly. 

Dandelion jelly is made from the puffy yellow petals. You pull the blades from the green bract that holds them together. I pinch the bract and pull off the petals, concentrating on the center section, since the outermost petals have a green stripe as the petals transition to the bract. The yellow pollen (I was competing with the bees for the flowers) will stain your hands; I bet I could have made an Easter egg dye from them.  I was avoiding the green sections since I wanted the jelly to be as yellow as possible. 

To make jelly, you cook the petals in water, and drain the liquid into another pan. Add sugar, pectin and a little lemon juice (which activates the pectin) and boil until it gels. The result is a honey-like substance.  I made a tiny experimental batch, but this could be produced in enough volume to preserve. I typically avoid powdered pectin in favor of my own “green apple jelly” but I used Sure-Jell here as a test run. 

The recipe – and some of the advice — came from Ava Chin’s excellent “Urban Forager” column in the New York Times.

Dandelion Jelly adapted from Ava Chin, NYT

2 c dandelion petals (no leaves or bracts)

2 c water

1 c granulated white sugar

2 tsp lemon juice

1½ tsp pectin (I used Sure-Jell dissolved in 1 tbsp of water)

Place a saucer in the freezer to chill (this will be used to test the gel).

Combine the dandelion petals and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Lightly boil for 10 minutes. Pour into a strainer and let the liquid drain out into a bowl or another saucepan.  Add the rest of the ingredients and bring to a boil, cooking until it passes the gel test: a drop on the chilled plate should be wrinkly then touched).

Read Full Post »

How to Eat Your Lawn: Wilted Dandelion Salad

Early in the season, when the dandelions first arrive to take over our lawn, we can weed and feed at the same time. Actually “lawn” stands for a patch of green under a great big black walnut tree between our house and the street. There is some grass in the mix, but we affectionately think of our yard as a prairie, full of all kinds of growing things that get mowed down, combined with leaves, composted and tilled into the garden as compost.  We don’t use chemicals of any kind, though black walnut trees are notorious for suppressing certain vegetation. Not so dandelions or violets. 

When they are young, wild (meaning not the cultivated variety) dandelion leaves are very tasty. Although they’re fine added to a mixed green salad, my favorite way of serving them is wilted in a bacon and cider vinegar dressing. You don’t have to use pork bacon for this. My best version is with duck bacon from d”Artagnan. The pretty fatty duck breast is cured perfectly and is flavorful. When I first traveled to the Middle East, I was taken aback by seeing bacon on the menu, only to be reassured that it was beef bacon.

After rendering the fat from the bacon, add some minced onion or shallot and cook until translucent, add a little sugar (I prefer brown sugar) to the pan, and deglaze the mix with cider vinegar, adding a little vegetable oil if the bacon is lean, as mine typically is. Pour the warm dressing over the greens and toss to wilt. For an extra treat, I like to add tomatoes tossed in wasabi cream, a recipe I concocted for Paper Chef, a blog challenge that sadly went dark a few months ag

Wilted Dandelion Greens with Bacon Vinaigrette

Handful of washed dandelion leaves, or other bitter greens

1-2 slices good quality bacon

1 minced shallot or half a small onion (optional)

1 tsp brown sugar

1-3 tbsp cider vinegar (depending on fat yield

Vegetable oil (if insufficient bacon fat)

Assemble the greens in a serving bowl since you will want to serve this immediately after dressing it.

Make the warm dressing. Render the fat from the bacon over low heat. Remove the bacon to drain and add a little vinegar and sugar to the pan. (If adding onions, soften them in the fat before adding the vinegar.) Pour the warm mixture over the greens, crumble on the bacon and toss to coat the greens.

Read Full Post »

March: First Foraging and a Few Sprouts

March is predictably unpredictable with blustery weather (“in like a lion”) and deceptive mildness (“out like a lamb”). It is the time of anticipation and false hopes. And surprise. After a month of snow cover and a few meltingly mild days, our garden ground is finally visible, and it is green!  Hillocks of the vibrant harbinger of spring, chickweed, emerge among the twigs and mud.  Salad time!  What did you say?

Chickweed, low growing in swirls from a defined center, has edible lobe-like leaves that are slightly spicy, a tiny tame version of cress. Rich in Vitamin C, so I’m told, they are delightful replacements for raw parsley or any other little green you might use for garnish and spunk. I haven’t ventured to cook these guys, but am really enjoying them raw. I knew about edible chickweed from a foraging hike led by an expert a few years ago but was recently reminded by Ava Chin’s New York Times column, a fun and fascinating blog about urban foraging: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/author/ava-chin

There are so many types of safe-to-eat plants out there, basically free food: dandelion (coming soon), purslane, lamb’s lettuce, and other “weeds.” We have wild ginger somewhere in our woods. Ramps fall into the same category by the way. My grandfather and I used to do “down to the crick” to pluck them for a delicious feast.

Meanwhile in the pantry, we are sprouting radish seeds for quick consumption. They add a peppery punch to salads and cooked vegetables and are easy to grow at home. Tiny spring greens pack a punch to the palate, and now that the first stirrings of chives and lovage in my pot are peeking through, spring can’t be far behind.

Read Full Post »